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Twist Collective Blog

Design Process: Chartres

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Published on Thursday, 15 July 2010 09:49

by Fiona Ellis

I know everybody is excited to see the Fall issue (me included) but summer isn’t over yet you know! We just heard that Elann is having a sale on Reynolds' Cool Cotton so now is the perfect time to make my design from last year's Summer issue of Twist Collective, Chartres. If you get going now you will have it done for Summer’s last hurray and will be able to wear it under a jacket when Fall does arrive.

This got me thinking about when I had originally designed Chartres. I spend quite a bit of time musing over that elusive thing we call creativity, and I post here often about the whole process including where I find my inspiration. I was more than a little surprised and amused when the swatch for Chartres almost fell off my needles without my thinking too hard about it. I was working on it as a carry around project and along with my knitting I always have a book with me. I was reading “Pillars of the Earth” by Ken Follett, which is a millstone of a book and not ready good carry-around material but I just couldn’t put it down.

So one afternoon as I worked on the swatch I decided that it needed to have a focal point. As I believe most of us would rather draw attention to our faces rather than our hips I created a gentle movement of the vertical lines towards a converging point at the neckline.

I was especially pleased with how it looked but something about it looked very familiar. I picked up the book later and there it was right on the cover - I had created a cathedral window tracery without even being aware I was doing it. So of course the design was named Chartres after the famous cathedral in France.